Opioid Addiction In 2016: Employer Costs Pass $2.6 Billion Per Year With 50% Used to Cover Children

Employer Costs Pass $2.6 Billion Per Year With 50% Used to Cover Children

By Mark A. York (August 3, 2018)

Employers spent $2.6 billion on opioid addiction in 2016

$1.5 billion+ was spent on children with opiate addiction issues

(MASS TORT NEXUS MEDIA) The now commonly known costs associated with employers treating opioid addiction and the affiliated issues have increased eight hundred percent since 2004 to an eye-watering $2.6 billion in 2016, a new report reveals.

The latest analysis shows that half of the cost was spent covering employees’ children.

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation report found that prescription use of addictive painkillers among people with employer offered health coverage is now at the lowest levels in 10 years.

This comes shortly after a CDC study revealed there was been a nearly 30 percent increase in overdoses between 2015 and 2016.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids killed more than 42,000 people in 2016, more than any year on record.

With 40 percent of those deaths involving a prescription opioid such as Oxycontin and Vicodin and other widely prescribed opiates. This has also resulted in the multi-billion lawsuits filed against Opioid Big Pharma drug makers and distributors by cities, counties and states across the country, see Mass Tort Nexus Briefcase “Opioid Litigation Versus Opiate Prescription Industry MDL 2804, US District Court of Ohio”with the drug makers and distributors scrambling to defend the opiate marketing strategies that have caused billions and billions of dollars in costs, medical damages and loss of productivity annually in the United States.

The Kaiser Family Foundation found that the $2.6 billion spending cost companies and workers about $26 per enrollee in 2016, which now appears to be a “man-made” healthcare cost increase associated with the widely accepted Opiate Big Pharma marketing practices over the last 20 years. This include telling doctors and the healthcare industry that “opiates are not as addictive as they used to be” and “we’ve altered the drug compound to control opiate release” which was the widely used Purdue Pharma marketing strategy.

Employers have been limiting insurance coverage of opioids because of concerns about addiction. The report found that spending on opioid prescriptions falling 27 percent from a peak in 2009 – when 17.3 percent of large employer plan enrollees had at least one opioid prescription during that year. However, by 2016, that number dropped to 13.6 percent.

These drugs relieve pain by attaching to specific proteins called opioid receptors, which are found on nerve cells in the brain, spinal cord, gastrointestinal tract, and other organs in the body. When they attach to these receptors, they reduce the perception of pain.

[STUDY OBJECTIVES:The prevalence of opioid use disorder (OUD) during pregnancy is increasing. Practical recommendations will help providers treat pregnant women with OUD and reduce potentially negative health consequences for mother, fetus, and child. This article summarizes the literature review conducted using the RAND/University of California, Los Angeles Appropriateness Method project completed by the US Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to obtain current evidence on treatment approaches for pregnant and parenting women with OUD and their infants and children]

Prescription opioids and illicit drugs have become incredibly pervasive throughout the US, and things are only getting worse.

In the early 2000s, the FDA and CDC started to notice a steady increase in cases of opioid addiction and overdose. In 2013, they issued guidelines to curb addiction.

However, that same year – now regarded as the year the epidemic took hold – a CDC report revealed an unprecedented surge in rates of opioid addiction.

Overdose deaths are now the leading cause of death among young Americans – killing more in a year than were ever killed annually by HIV, gun violence or car crashes.

Preliminary CDC data published by the New York Times shows US drug overdose deaths surged 19 percent to at least 59,000 in 2016.

That is up from 52,404 in 2015, and double the death rate a decade ago.

It means that for the first time drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for Americans under 50 years old.

The data lays bare the bleak state of America’s opioid addiction crisis fueled by deadly manufactured drugs like fentanyl.

These drugs also effect the brain regions involved in reward, so it can also produce a sense of pleasure by triggering the same processes that make people feel good when they are having fun or sex.

Experts say many people’s first contact with opioids is through some form of social contact: either a friend who was sent home with Oxycontin after a surgical procedure or a relative who received an opioid prescription for chronic pain.

‘Opioids, are not a bacteria virus, but the drug, in this case, spreads through social networks…even in some ways a virus, like HIV, is spread to a great degree through social networks,’ he added.

Due to the link between hospitals and the opioid crisis, doctors have been coming up with innovative ways to curb the epidemic.

However, hospitals have been doing their part in trying to curb the opioid epidemic.

For instance, the ER department at St. Joseph University Medical Center in New Jersey managed to halve the rate of opioid prescriptions by using dry needles and laughing gas to treat chronic pain.

In 2016, the department launched an Alternative to Opiates program that uses trigger point injections and a local anesthetics in lieu of opioids to relieve pain. Other alternative pain relieving methods they used was warm compressors and music – they have a harpist roam the halls playing tunes to soothe the patients.

Dr Mark Rosenberg, chair of emergency medicine, said he and his colleagues founded the program after they realized chronic pain was one of the reasons most patients came to their emergency department.

‘We wanted to develop an aggressive acute pain management program that focused on evidence based principles but avoided opioids,’ Dr Rosenberg said.

St. Joseph University Medical Center isn’t the only hospital to implement this program, Kaiser Permanente has implemented an Integrated Pain Service, an eight-week course designed to educate high-risk opioid patients about pain management.

Some experts have stated that the beginning of the end of the epidemic may be near due to tightened regulations on opioid prescription monitoring, local-level efforts to make naloxone, an anti-overdose drug, and drug-assisted rehabilitation more accessible to high-risk populations. Then there are many more “experts” who state that the opioid crisis and the future affiliated issues are going to be on the healthcare, insurance and socio-economic forefront of America for at least the next generation.

Broken Families, Less Funding

The patterns of parent addiction that overflows into child addiction is something that wasn’t part of the opiate equation until fairly recently, where employer issues now mirror a national trend of multiple generations being addicted to opiates. Largely because of the opioid epidemic, there were 30,000 more children in foster care in 2015 than there were in 2012—an 8 percent increase. In 14 states, from New Hampshire to North Dakota, the number of foster kids rose by more than a quarter between 2011 and 2015, according to data amassed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.In Texas, Florida, Oregon, and elsewhere, kids have been forced to sleep in state buildings because there were no foster homes available, says advocacy group Children’s Rights. Federal child welfare money has been dwindling for years, leaving state and local funding to fill in the gaps. But Ashtabula County is one of the poorest counties in Ohio, and despite a recent boost in funding, the state contributes the lowest share toward children’s services of any state in the country.

In the USA, Opioid use by women in rural areas is driving the increasing numbers. Tennessee is part of a cluster of states, including Alabama and Kentucky, experiencing some of the highest rates of NAS births. In East Tennessee the problem is particularly acute: Sullivan County alone reported a rate of 50.5 cases of NAS per 1,000 births, the highest rate in the state for five years running.

Tennessee is currently the only state in the country that equates substance abuse while pregnant with aggravated assault, punishable by a 15-year prison sentence. Eighteen other states consider it to be child abuse, and three say its grounds for civil commitment. Four states require drug testing of mothers and 18 require that healthcare professionals report when drug abuse is suspected. There are also 19 states that have created funding for targeted drug treatment programs for pregnant women.

Opponents of the punishment philosophy claim that punishing addicted pregnant women will not stop them from abusing drugs â€“ instead it will stop them from seeking prenatal care. Many also claim that these policies would unfairly punish mothers for drug use compared to fathers. Organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), have encouraged a treatment over punishment approach for pregnant mothers with drug addictions

Local efforts are now seen as the primary way to address the opioid crisis in children- the attempt to secure federal intervention and support to help curb the opioid crisis has not been a priority of the Trump Administration..

WHITE HOUSE PROMISED ON OPIOIDS BUT DIDN’T DELIVER

But since he took office, Trump’s plans to tackle the epidemic head-on have fizzled. Republicans’ recent effort to repeal and replace Obamacare would slash funding for Medicaid, which is the country’s largest payer for addiction services—and which covers nearly half of Ohio’s prescriptions for the opioid addiction medication buprenorphine. The bill would enable insurers in some states to get out of the Obamacare requirement to cover substance abuse treatment. A memo leaked in May revealed Trump’s plans to effectively eliminate the White House’s drug policy office, cutting its budget by 95 percent. (The administration has since backpedaled on the plans, following bipartisan criticism.) Trump’s 2018 budget proposes substantial cuts to the Administration for Children and Families, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

Until the governments at the federal, state and local levels can all agree on a long term viable solution to the opioid crisis and the impact on school age children, infants born addicted and society as a whole, the opiate drug crisis will linger for generations long into the future.